Phil Collins (or, the Monkey Love Man)

Jacob's Saturdays consisted of chores. When he woke up, he cleaned his apartment. After college, when he'd first started teaching, he had roommates and rented a house and had to deal with yard work and plants to satisfy the lease. His roommates were all graduate students who were too busy to do chores.

He did homework. He went shopping. Jacob shopped three days out. When he was in college, he'd read in a sociology class about all these couples who'd met shopping. Jacob thought it was all way too Lethal Weapon 2 and look how well that one turned out, with the girl drowned and the guy a drunken, rabid anti-Semite, but he still stuck to the frequent shopping. He always told himself he would cook something but he never did.

He went to a small, local grocery, owned and operated by an older married couple, pictures of them through the years on the wall, along with pictures of their kids growing into adults. It was downstairs from his apartment. He just had to walk out the front of the building, down the stairs and it was to his right. On the left was the Italian restaurant where he spent way too much money; across the street was a Chinese takeout place where he didn't spend enough.

The wife was pleasant enough, greeting him as he entered. Jacob had been shopping there since he moved in, almost two years ago, but he still hadn't become a regular. Their prices weren't terrible--convenience stores, for example, charged more--but it was pretty clear he would never be a regular. The son and daughter worked summers and they remembered him and were very friendly. If they ever took it over and Jacob never moved out of his apartment, he'd be a regular. He'd also have killed himself, but he would be a regular.

He smiled at her, said "hello," and took a basket.

He walked through the produce, looking at everything. He didn't know how to cook any vegetables he actually liked. He could boil and he could steam, but when things got more complicated than either of those processes, he was lost. Jacob didn't know what simmer meant until he was twenty-seven. He was cooking dinner for a girlfriend and had to call his mom to tell him.

Asparagus, a vegetable Jacob loved, confused him. Artichokes too--his one attempt at cooking artichokes had been an unmitigated disaster. It permanently ruined a pot and temporarily had Jacob and his roommates swearing off green vegetables. They also had to air out the kitchen for a week; luckily, the Oregon winter was temperate.

But he still pretended he might get some celery or carrots. Maybe lettuce for a salad. Even a bag of lettuce or just a pre-bagged salad. He didn't.

The butcher counter started at the rear of the produce section and Jacob pretended to look there too. He had a George Foreman Grill still in the box, a gift from an aunt when he got his first apartment. Jacob had always worried, like his mother had, about showing use of gifts people had given. No one ever visited Jacob though, so he never had to worry about it. He didn't even really communicate with his aunt. They were Facebook friends, of course; they never really talked.

He got some roast beef from the butcher, listened to the other shoppers talk about sirloin and other things he didn't know anything about, and picked up a loaf of French bread on his way to frozen dinner section. Since it was a somewhat pretentious grocery, they had some nice organic brands, which Jacob bought, though never in the portion control variety. He felt gypped if he didn't get a little dessert. He got one with apple crisp and two with cherry crisp. He didn't really care what entree he was getting.

The line was never short--especially on weekends, families stopped in for little things, snacks maybe, when frequenting the park across the street (though even weekends were nothing compared to weeknights around six, when there would be nine people minimum in line for the single register)--and Jacob passed the time playing on his cellphone. Thirty-one years old and he'd played more video games in the last year since he got the cellphone than he ever had before.

After he checked out with the wife, who treated him politely and impersonally as usual, he stood around in front of the stairs up to the apartment building, enjoying the breeze. He was also waiting for some of the people to move along. They mobbed in front of the grocery, waiting to cross the street, chitchatting with some neighbor they hadn't seen for a while. He hated going up the stairs to his apartment feeling like he was on display.

Once he did get upstairs, he put his microwave dinners in the freezer and put his beer in the refrigerator and went into the bedroom to take a nap. It wasn't even noon. Sometimes Jacob would get done with all his chores by two in the afternoon and have nothing else to do all day. He could find social things to do--his coupled friends all found it amusing to have him go along to dinner and to a show, just because he always had stories (like kids smoking pot in class)--but it was the time in between. From two to seven, a tenth of his days off per week, he had nothing to do. Sundays were worse, but he could justify doing nothing since he'd done it all on Saturday.

Plus, he took a long nap on Sunday, every week, as he dejectedly prepared for another work week. He'd sleep five hours, from noon usually, and still go to bed around ten.

His nap lasted forty minutes. His soothing sounds of the forest hadn't even finished when he woke up. He stayed in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, then got up and started some laundry. Jacob did laundry multiple times a week too; every time he went shopping downstairs, he come upstairs and start some laundry.

His life hadn't always been so mundane. He used to wake up on the floor of his bathroom Saturday afternoons, almost no memory of the night before, certainly not coming home. Then he grew up but he did it out of sync with his friends--he got a career first, most of them got paired up first, then got careers.

At work, at lunch, he'd talk to the guys a few years older than him who talked about dating services. They all made single women in their thirties sound like monsters. Jacob hadn't looked into any dating services, but he had thought about what he'd write in his profile.

It all sounded great until he realized he was making it all up, compositing himself with the Compsons, which was especially depressing given Jacob thought he'd been making it upbeat.

He had his windows open for the breeze. One of his neighbors was listening to Phil Collins. Something from a movie, Jacob didn't remember the title--his mom had liked it.

Even with the nap, his chores were done at ten to three.

His coupled friends were still busy, his single male friends only wanted to go places to meet women (nothing more appealing to the female sex than thirty year-old men loitering around a college campus on a Saturday), his single female friends only wanted to go places to meet men (Jacob's single female friends hated his single male friends and vice versa). Jacob wasn't even sure he liked any of his friends anymore. It wasn't a recent development; he was pretty sure he'd disliked them for years, just maintained the relationships to give himself something to do.

Vivienne's number was on his caller id. He wouldn't have it otherwise. How cheesy would it be to call her with "One More Night" playing dimly in the background. Like when he'd been thirteen calling a girl he liked with Barry White playing on his mom's turntable.

They could go see a movie. Maybe go to the botanical gardens, they were having a special seasonal exhibit, he'd seen advertisements up on buses when driving to work. Or maybe the batting cages. Jacob used to have a friend who always said batting cages were great for early dates.

Debating whether or not to call, Jacob decided "One More Night" had an effective chorus, but the actual content of the song wasn't catchy at all. It also wouldn't sound good playing in the background for his phone call. His phone call where he asked out the girl--the woman--he'd turned down for a date maybe sixteen hours earlier.

He thought about going through his music and trying to find something good, but then he realized she might not answer.

All of Jacob's music was on his computer--he wasn't sure if his neighbor had loud computer speakers or still actually had a CD player--and he made playlist of all the songs he could play in the background for a phone call to Vivienne.

The list started with thirty-nine songs, but after listening and considering and lots of cutting, Jacob got it down to six songs.

Of course, it took him most of the afternoon and before he'd even finished listening to the final playlist, his friends were calling, offering him something to otherwise occupy his time.